Wikileaks, Amazon i libri e i regali di Natale

Lo sfratto del sito di Wikileaks da parte di Amazon si va arricchendo di dettagli e diventa  critica la situazione di Amazon che non ha chiarito i motivi per cui ha mandato via Wikileaks dai suoi server. Sicuramente avrà le sue buone ragioni, che però potrebbero costargli  molto care nel caso in cui i consumatori in rete ritenessero, come ragionevolmente può essere, che il suo gesto sia poco corretto. A quel punto potrebbero decidere una  protesta civile in rete finalizzata a consigliare di non comprare libri e reglai natalizi sul maggiore sito mondiale di ecommerce. Conviene in giornata dare un’occhiata alle quotazioni delle azioni dell’azienda fondata da Jeff Bezos. E’ l’economia connessa e il potere ai consumatori.

Wikileaks scrive su Twitter

WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free–fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.

e poi

If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.TPM

TPM spiega meglio i fatti

Early this week, after hacker attacks on its site, Wikileaks moved its operation, including all those diplomatic cables, to the greener pastures of Amazon.com’s cloud servers. But today, it was down again and mid-afternoon we found out the reason: Amazon had axed Wikileaks from its servers.

The announcement came from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Lieberman said in a statement that Amazon’s “decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material.”

Committee staff had seen news reports yesterday that Wikileaks was being hosted on Amazon’s servers, a committee spokeswoman told TPM. The service, we should note, is self-serve; as with services like YouTube, the company does not screen or pre-approve the content posted on its servers.

Staffers then, according to the spokeswoman, Leslie Phillips, called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, “Are there plans to take the site down?”

Amazon called them back this morning to say they had kicked Wikileaks off, Phillips said. Amazon said the site had violated unspecified terms of use.

Amazon has not responded to requests for comment. Its terms of acceptable use include a ban on illegal activities (it’s not yet clear whether Wikileaks has broken any laws) and content “that may be harmful to our users, operations, or reputation.” It also prohibits using Amazon’s servers “to violate the security or integrity of any network, computer or communications system,” although Wikileaks obviously obtained the cables long before hopping on Amazon’s servers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet freedom of speech by defending court cases, said the axing certainly doesn’t violate the First Amendment. But it is, according to senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston, “disappointing.”

“This certainly implicates First Amendment rights to the extent that web hosts may, based on direct or informal pressure, limit the materials the American public has a First Amendment right to access,” Bankston told TPM.